Welding Metal, Wielding a Chain Saw

By Carolyn Lorié

Valley News Education Writer

Randolph Center -- Amber Horne of Whitcomb High School has made a fine cookie and Meghan Ashworth, the instructor of the “cookie cutter” workshop, holds it up for all to admire.

The young women nod approvingly.

A raw wind presses against them, as this is an outdoor workshop that has nothing to do with warm, steamy kitchens, baking mitts or batter. The participants are outfitted in chaps, work boots and hardhats and the “cookies” they are cutting are slices of a pine log, lopped off with a chain saw.

Working a chain saw was one of the many skills girls from high schools all over Vermont, and a handful from New Hampshire, got to explore at the “Women Can Do” conference held Thursday at Vermont Technical College. Northern New England Tradeswomen, a non-profit organization that provides training and advocacy to women in the trades, sponsored the event.

The conference was started seven years ago by a group of educators and tradeswomen who wanted all girls to feel they could do anything: down a tree, wire a house, run a backhoe.

“Our hope is that something about the day will inspire them to think more broadly about their options,” said Tiffany Bluemle, executive director of Northern New England Tradeswomen.

The first conference drew 60 girls; last week there were 430.

Among them was Sunsetta Gay, a senior at Williamstown High School, who took part in a mock felony stop, under the guidance of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

Gay, who wants to go into law enforcement, played the role of one of the arresting officers, shouting orders at a carload of girls (other workshop participants) who had just been pulled over for a spree of convenience-store robberies. Some of the participants hesitated when giving orders.

“You're in control here. They are not in control,” Lt. Tracy Simon reminds them. “If they (the ‘felons') are doing something you don't like, you tell them.”

Simon provides the high school students with something she didn't have at their age: a role model.

When she became a police officer 15 years ago, law enforcement was still dominated by men, and she describes her first few months on the job like this: “I felt like a goldfish in a goldfish bowl.”

But she stuck it out and uses her experience to nudge young women into believing they too might have what it takes.

Seeing women in the field and being exposed to a trade makes a difference, says Bluemle. After the 2004 conference, 78 percent of the participants said their ideas of what they could do had been expanded.

Though the number of women going into fields traditionally thought of as “men's work” -- construction, auto repair, law enforcement -- has risen in the last decade, it remains relatively low.

In 1995, 75 women enrolled in non-health related programs (nursing and dental hygiene tends to attract large numbers of women) at Vermont Technical College, compared to 200 men. Ten years later, more women enrolled but the gender gap is even greater: 94 women and 330 men.

But last week's conference wasn't necessarily about steering young women toward attending a technical college or going into a trade.

Many of the participants have other aspirations, yet considered the day worthwhile.

Horne, maker of the fine chain saw cookie, is interested in the culinary arts, as well as the theater. But after years of watching her father run a chain saw and feeling afraid to give it a go, she decided it was time.

“It was pretty fun,” she says afterward, with a look of satisfaction.

Danielle Foley, an 11th-grader at the Randolph Technical Career Center, isn't uncertain about her career plans, but attended the conference because she “wanted the opportunity to spend the day doing guy things.”

One of those “guy things” was welding, taught by metal sculptor Kat Clear of Burlington.

Clear and Foley worked on what looked like a metal chair made for a gnome. The two women held torches and wore protective black helmets that made them look like futuristic knights.

“I always wish I had the opportunity to be exposed to the trades when I was younger,” says Clear, a graduate of the University of Vermont,who spent a year at the California College of Arts and Crafts to learn welding.

She considers the skill a useful one, even for women who become accountants or attorneys, as there is a long list of tasks -- such as repairing a automobile tailpipe -- that can be done with a blowtorch.

Bluemle believes the conference benefits all girls, even those who will never pursue a skill beyond the one-day taste the workshops give them. “Even if they are going to college to major in English, they will be making a choice from an informed point of view and not making a choice because they didn't know what the options were,” she says.

In fact, Meghan Ashworth, the instructor of the “cookie cutter” workshop, is still a high school student herself and is considering studying architectural design at Vermont Technical College.

But she is full of praise for the skills she learned in the forestry program at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center, including the one she imparted to Amber Horne.

“It's very empowering. It's a great feeling when you run a chain saw or a piece of equipment as a girl,” says Ashworth.

Carolyn LoriÐ can be reached at (603) 298 -- 8711, ext. 220, or clorie@valleynews.com